This song came out when I was in college. My college girlfriend loved it and I, being a college boy, goofed on her for it. Although I regret a lot of my behavior I see my point when I hear that song but I also see hers. I don’t know if that particular song would survive without either the extreme 80s production or the raspy voiced agony but the combination does have some alchemy that makes you pay attention. Then again, I like raspy-voiced female singers, Stevie Nicks, Kim Karnes, Melissa Ethridge, and I always loved Bonnie Tyler’s It’s a Heartache.
a lovely remembrance. i don't remember my first encounter with total eclipse of the heart, but i do remember stumbling across the video in the early days of youtube and watching it over and over, rapt. i didn't have the word at the time but in retrospect this was maybe my first experience of finding something camp (i'd seen rocky horror, but codified camp, while fun, is not really the same thing). it wasn't exactly "good" the way i was used to thinking of things as good, but it was also not precisely "so bad it's good"; it was totally awesome in some way divorced from the usual questions of good/bad, which was sort of a discovery for me of a new way things could be totally awesome for teenage me and thus remains in my memory after all these years.
i actually have a general allergy to music that Really Sounds Like The Eighties, which extends to nearly all popular music produced in the eighties, but i do love that song, which sounds supremely eighties, and while i'd never thought about that way i think you're right - it's the grain in her voice that makes it work.
Wow, that was great. "[T]he kind of bad relationships that took place between gods on Mount Olympus, if those gods were also somehow broke and lonely people with dead-end lives" - perfect.
Perfect title for the whole glorious, hair-sprayed era. Best days of my life.
This song came out when I was in college. My college girlfriend loved it and I, being a college boy, goofed on her for it. Although I regret a lot of my behavior I see my point when I hear that song but I also see hers. I don’t know if that particular song would survive without either the extreme 80s production or the raspy voiced agony but the combination does have some alchemy that makes you pay attention. Then again, I like raspy-voiced female singers, Stevie Nicks, Kim Karnes, Melissa Ethridge, and I always loved Bonnie Tyler’s It’s a Heartache.
My favorite factoid about "Total Eclipse" will always be that it's really about vampires.
a lovely remembrance. i don't remember my first encounter with total eclipse of the heart, but i do remember stumbling across the video in the early days of youtube and watching it over and over, rapt. i didn't have the word at the time but in retrospect this was maybe my first experience of finding something camp (i'd seen rocky horror, but codified camp, while fun, is not really the same thing). it wasn't exactly "good" the way i was used to thinking of things as good, but it was also not precisely "so bad it's good"; it was totally awesome in some way divorced from the usual questions of good/bad, which was sort of a discovery for me of a new way things could be totally awesome for teenage me and thus remains in my memory after all these years.
i actually have a general allergy to music that Really Sounds Like The Eighties, which extends to nearly all popular music produced in the eighties, but i do love that song, which sounds supremely eighties, and while i'd never thought about that way i think you're right - it's the grain in her voice that makes it work.
Wow, that was great. "[T]he kind of bad relationships that took place between gods on Mount Olympus, if those gods were also somehow broke and lonely people with dead-end lives" - perfect.